Five Secrets to Enabling Highly Collaborative Ecosystems

There is much talk about business ecosystems as the newest models for collective collaboration across industry, geography and culture. These ecosystems are considered important not only because value chains and supply chains are outsourced and fragmented, but also due to the speed in which markets change and new competitors literally pop-up. Today, key partners once operating at arm’s length around short-term contracts need to be closer and more responsive than ever, while also connecting with others actors once considered tertiary.

In addition, ecosystem models are being conceived to take advantage of new opportunities being created by broader interconnections. Interestingly ecosystem development is now not only reactionary to market change, but decidedly proactive. For example, who would have ever thought that a tech company such as Google would produce cars and perhaps compete with the largest of automakers, all the while cooperating with several of them on developing self-driving technology?

So here we are. Companies today need consistency, reliability, commitment and capability to react quickly in a system of greater connection, volatility and competition, while simultaneously looking for more sustainability, resilience and greater permanence.

Luckily, today, we not only have the wherewithal to envision business ecosystems, but also the technical and operational capabilities to blue-print, develop and enable their emergence. However, if not well-conceived, companies involved in making them a reality, particularly firms in the ‘center’ of the ecosystem may not access the benefits that a truly well designed ecosystem can bring.

At the end of the day, the devil is not only in the structural details, but also in the fundamental social contracts between the partners who participate in the ecosystem and choose to contribute collaboratively to its emergence.

These tried and true secrets, stemming from my recent book ‘Enabling Collaboration’ will help to build the kind of ecosystem that can self-correct and self-sustain in times of market change and dynamism that supports all actors’ success.

Build the Social Contracts as you build the Structure of the Ecosystem: this means sitting with the key ecosystem stakeholders, those that perhaps currently are part of the ‘supply chain and value chain’ and those that may lie right outside it. For example, customers, the public sector and NGO’s may make sense. In structured Partnership Innovation Sessions, establish the ‘basic operating principles’ of the ecosystem, founded on the affiliation and membership goals of the groups working through the details.

Create the Emotional Connection of Real People Co-creating Together: building a sustainable ecosystem does not happen in a vacuum but through the people who contribute to its design. To do this, bring diverse stakeholders who are an integral and vested part of the ecosystem to build the social fabric and the structural elements. Invest the time and effort for these relationships to be woven together in a productive and authentic fashion.

Use Principles of Ecosystem Sustainability:

Fair Distribution of Resources: Almost all ecological ecosystems use sunlight as their energy resource, in our case, sunlight is attune to money, and the fair and sustainable distribution of such value is fundamental to ecosystem design.

Establish Formal and informal Feedback Loops: All ecosystems have cycles of waste and replenishment of nutrients. Dealing with waste and other environmental concerns are part and parcel of ecosystem design. In addition, this includes creating formal and informal feedback-loops architected into the ecosystem where all actors can communicate and contribute to improve and better its operability.

Design Economic Resilience into the Ecosystem: resilience can happen serendipitous through the basic interconnections between the actors, or consciously through insurance products or savings accounts. The ecosystem actors can draw upon these resources during challenging times, or for investments in new shared technologies and capabilities.

Include Diverse Actors: All ecosystems depend on bio-diversity. For business ecosystems this includes ensuring that all touch-points of an ecosystem have some way to contribute to and get benefit from being part of the ecosystem. Benefit in this case, can be monetary, social or informational.

Leverage Technology but Don’t use it as a Replacement for Human Interaction, leveraging technology is a critical component for designing ecosystems and enabling participant stakeholder-partners to adapt to just-in-time learning, connect and communicate directly with all ecosystem participants. However, technology and systems do not replace people talking with and connecting together and coming to terms on challenges the ecosystem faces. This way it can up-level to better designs and improved overall functioning.

Seek out Third Party Objective Partnership Facilitator, Collaborative Leadership, regardless of size, from the smallest of groups to the largest of complex multi-stakeholder ecosystems requires the help of a skilled objective third party. This third party, as a person or team of conveners, guides groups to see relational blind spots between partnering organizations. These unseen elements if not proactively addressed during the development phase, ultimately leak to the detriment of the system. It happens time and time again; groups don’t express grievances or concerns openly and still cooperate, ultimately unresolved issues cause greater problems down the line. Partners may try to win-over on the system, or worse, use unresolved issues as justification for inaction, lack of true collaborative participation and ownership.

What from this post could you take action on right now to improve or begin building your ecosystem?

What examples of ecosystem design can you share with the community that readers could learn from?

About Praxis

Praxis is the process by which a theory, lesson, or skill is enacted, embodied, and realized through engagement, application, exercise, and practice.

Here at PRAXIS, the Journal of Applied Collaborative Leadership, practitioners contribute, share and learn together to develop PRAXIS in enabling collaboration to emerge in all areas of organizational life.

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Yves Morieux: As work gets more complex, 6 rules to simplify

A wonderful, intuitive and practical talk by Yves Morieux from BCG on simplifying business by building the interconnections to promote cooperative and collaborative conversations and enhancing collective knowing, connection, and most importantly, growing the company muscle to adapt to what is truly happening.

To compete with our most ardent competitors, in reality, our own created complexity, bureaucracy, and ineffective organizational structures, we need to simplify our ways of working together.

At the end of the day, it’s about creating the conditions by which people must cooperate to get work done and collaborate to tackle the collective challenges of our own dysfunctional self-sufficiency by removing complicatedness, where the true battle lies. Take a look; I’m certain you’ll find it interesting!

Good reads

In this cutting-edge work and first-ever “how-to” guide for building successful collaborations, Martin Echavarria, sets out to improve the success rates of strategic alliances and partnerships to become more competitive, more nimble, and more innovative.
This book is an essential guide for any innovator who is interested in driving tremendous value and success for themselves and their companies in this new world of global business alliances. Visit: http://www.enablingcollaboration.com/ to learn more and download additional content to the book.

Theories of Human Communication

On it’s tenth edition, Stephen W. Littlejohn and Karen A. Foss have written a magnificent text-book for the student and practitioner interested in learning and understanding human communication theory. Relevant to anyone thinking about the art of collaboration and collaborative leadership, and of course critical to any group work; communication is after-all the rails on which productive collaboration occurs.

An excellent book full of helpful information for any executive looking for clarity on developing an alliances governance and collaboration structure among other important contractual elements. All of which can be applied in Territories 3 & 4 of Coherence’s 5-Territories of Alliance Development.

Dialogue and The Art of Thinking TogetherA Pioneering Approach to Communicating in Business and in Life.

Isaacs’s book is a well written, interesting and practical guide to building collaborative spaces between all kinds of groups. A highly recommended work.